Ancient Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. This web site is my attempt to document, from my perspective, these "interesting times".

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

That Old Clinton Magic

I don't see why anyone should have been surprised by what happened in New Hampshire. The Clinton's have always benefited from their enemies. Why? Because being a Clinton, for some reason, always drives said enemies bat shit insane (see Andrew Sullivan as highlighted in the previous post).

Think back to 1997 when the Lewinsky scandal first broke. Pundits were literally predicting that Clinton's presidency was number in weeks, if not days (Sam Donaldson specifically said this on This Week on that first weekend). That was until the first polling came out and Clinton's approval ratings jumped several points.

Those ratings stayed in the high 60s/low 70s range up until impeachment. Every single time the story took a turn for the worse for Clinton the pundits and his enemies would get all gleeful at the prospect of Clinton finally falling, only again to be foiled by a subsequent bump in the polls.

The most notable was right after the Grand Jury tape was broadcast and his enemies once again said, "Now, finally, Clinton will fall." Instead his ratings jumped as much as 10 points.

The People repeatedly refuted the enemies of Clinton if for no other reason than to go along with them would be to associate themselves with bat-shit insanity. The same thing happened, I believe, in New Hampshire. All the pundits and all of the Clinton enemies were predicting that this was finally the end of Clintonism. And, once again, The People defied the conventional wisdom.

It's a shame really, because there are many legitimate reasons to not want Clinton to win the Presidency. But those reasons will never get a fair hearing so long as her opponents repeatedly rub their hands in glee whenever it looks like she is on the ropes.

You want to stop Hillary Clinton? Then stop celebrating her "death" before it has actually happened.